Opinion: Happily, Canadian bilingualism on the rise

Robert Rothon, Special to The Gazette11.21.2012

Robert Rothon is executive director of Canadian Parents for French.

Many of the city's road signs are a window into Montreal's politics of place, its inherent bilingualism. Overall, that is on the rise in Canada, Robert Rothon writes.Marcos Townsend
/ Gazette file photo

MONTREAL — Late last month, Statistics Canada began releasing data on language from the 2011 federal census. Many commentators, particularly in Quebec, interpreted the results negatively, both in terms of trends within Quebec and across all of Canada as far as bilingual and French speakers are concerned.

However, Canadian Parents for French, a pan-Canadian organization that promotes French-second-language (FSL) education, has analyzed the data and sees a more encouraging demographic picture.

First of all, it is not true that the percentage of French-English bilingual speakers is declining. There was, in fact, a small rise from 2006 to 2011 as well as a corresponding decline in the percentage of unilingual English and French speakers in Canada. This decline in proportional terms, however, is due to the rising numbers of immigrants whose mother tongue is not an official-language of Canada. Put another way, fewer Canadians are unilingual than before.

In Quebec, close to 98 per cent of the population speaks French or English, and of this group, a significant number speak both languages.

In addition, the number of people who identify their mother tongue as both English and French has been increasing since 2006.

The census also provided information linking Canada’s linguistic landscape to its labour force. Here, CPF would like to underline the fact that official-language bilinguals, regardless of mother tongue, have an employment rate higher than the national average, and an unemployment rate under the national average. This is true in Quebec as well as in Canada as a whole.

All of this points to the increasing presence and value of official-language bilingualism. It is clear that individual bilingualism is an asset on the job market — for the bilingual Quebecer in particular.

Some of the francophone organizations working on behalf of French first-language instruction believe that an increase in English second-language instruction would increase bilingualism and lead to the inevitable erosion of the strength of French in Quebec and Canada, through a form of “soft” assimilation. The reality is different. In Quebec, bilingual speakers are a great asset to the province; a large percentage of official-language bilinguals have long embraced, or are currently adopting, French-language culture.

Nationally, official-language bilingualism is helping to increase the French-speaking population of Canada.

French is far from disappearing from Canada.

Currently, no language is on track to outnumber French as Canada’s second most widely spoken language. Punjabi comes in at a distant third, with not quite 500,000 speakers, in contrast to the 21 per cent of Canadians who can speak French.

Many parents who don’t speak one of Canada’s two official languages are trying to enrol their children in French-second-language programs outside Quebec, and it is only a lack of school-board capacity to meet this demand that is limiting enrolment growth. Despite this limitation, school boards are doing their best. Both British Columbia and Alberta have sustained growth in French-second-language programs for over the past decade. Ontario saw a 6.9-per-cent increase in enrolment in French immersion between 2009 and 2010. Across the country, there was a 10-per-cent increase in enrolment in French-second-language programs between 2009 and 2011.

In Quebec, Montreal is an excellent example of how official-language bilingualism is positively shaping the nation. According to the census, the large majority of immigrants settling in Montreal know French, and more than half of the immigrant population speaks both French and English.

A strong case can be made that Montreal is the city that attracts the best and brightest of official-language bilinguals: anglophones and allophones who want to learn and improve their French, and francophones who are not threatened by English and who appreciate non-francophones who are trying to learn French.

With the release of the 2011 census, it is easy to see how linguistic duality is linked – both in Quebec and in Canada as a whole. English-French bilingualism is on the rise, as is the number of allophones who speak either one or both official languages. This is something that Canadians, as citizens of one of the relatively few countries with more than one official language, should be proud to see.Robert Rothonis executive director of Canadian Parents for French.

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